The Cult of Craft

Bryan’s conversation about “Craft Beer Evangelists” hit a nerve.

Mainly because, for the past few years, I was a member of a cult. A group of single-minded missionaries, of fanboy zealots, of plaid-clad revolutionaries, riding out from California on their own modern crusade.

I didn’t even really know I was a member, but I still played my part. I parroted the virtues of our leaders to anyone who would listen (and many who were only pretending to listen), meanwhile demonizing the unforgivable sins of our “enemies.” To me it all made sense, it made me feel good, and gave me a sense of identity. The group felt like home, a warm and cozy fireside gathering where the other people in the room just “got” me.

I didn’t question or challenge the narrative. I was perpetuation manifest. I was a member of the Cult of Craft Beer.

Ha! Beer as a cult! Sounds ridiculous, right? Perhaps Oliver has been dipping into the rum stash too much, and came out the other side a wee bit hyperbolic?

Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Let’s look at some of the defining characteristics of cult-like behavior (my emphasis added):

• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its belief system, ideology
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members
• The group is preoccupied with making money
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members
• The most loyal members feel there can be no life outside the context of the group

Sound familiar?  Trade organizations setting definitions so we know what to drink? People on social media treating honest criticism as inflammatory nonsense? These behaviors rear their heads often, as new people enter the fold, or diehards do their best to keep the group-think thriving. The “Us-versus-Them” mentality is particularly strong, and has a become a defining aspect of “craft,” even though the “devious” Big Beer Companies still produce and sell 80%+ of all beer in the country.

The cult is alive and Tweeting. Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent conversation I got into with @BrewStuds:

@OliverJGray @beerbecue7 a good chunk of the country is still fighting to have the same freedoms that we enjoy in the more reformed states

— Brew Studs ♥ Beer (@BrewStuds) October 29, 2015

Rhetorically, this is dangerous territory. It puts beer in the same category as emancipation from slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage. It sounds like we are fighting for some righteous cause, like we’ll go to war if we must for our “rights” (even if those rights only apply to what fermented drinks we can buy). It’s absurd when viewed from the outside, but totally reasonable to someone on the inside.

I challenged BrewStuds and said their thinking was potentially militaristic. Their response: “Militaristic? Passionate maybe.” This argument comes up a lot in conversations about beer, the idea that passion is justification for pretty much any behavior, and the real reason for brewing beer. Not money or economics or science, just “passion.” It tends to trump anything else; in the eyes of the cult, there’s no way craft brewers are anything but open and altruistic, because of their “passion” means they’re making great beer for us to enjoy with no ulteriors whatsoever.

This psychological magnetism to beer isn’t really a surprise, though. It was going to be something, and beer’s timing was impeccable.

With the economy still sluggish and a large chunk of Millennials out of work or underpaid, America is ripe for cultural makeover. Much like Tyler Durden’s “Project Mayhem” in  Fight Club, those joining the craft movement do so of their own free will after meeting others who’ve joined the proverbial fold, seeking some kind of freedom from the status quo, something they can wrap their identity around to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Beer might seem an odd vehicle for cultural readjustment, but history plus availability plus the clever story of authenticity woven by small brewers has made it a perfect catalyst for social chemical reaction. Plus, humanity has always had a penchant for intoxication.

The first rule about beer club is that you ALWAYS talk about beer club.

Now that I’ve managed to step aside (either through disillusionment), I can see just how powerful the pull is. Many Americans (especially young Americans) are lacking financial and vocational independence, and it makes sense that they’d seek identity through some cultural movement. It makes sense that they’d come together to form a group, and beer, breweries, and bars offer an ideal set of circumstances (regionalism, nationalism, egalitarianism) on which to build a like-minded community.

But all perceived sense aside, a one-sided narrative, especially one fueled by a business-minded trade organization, is not an ideal way to live one’s life. Cults, typically, are not good things. They promote polar thinking and mindless subservience, even if the original goal was something much, much more humanistic and kind.

But cults are also not often an intentional creation, they just happen when one’s message reaches enough people who agree with it.

So is craft a cult? By literal definition, definitely a solid maybe.

Note: I want to make it very clear that I am not against the Brewer’s Association, no more than I’m against ABInBev. I’m a writer, trying to stay impartial. I actually support the BA and what they’ve done for over all US beer. But it’s important to look at all sides, as objectively as possible, without letting your personal prejudice (either way!) color the debate.

Beer n’ Books: Gardening for the Homebrewer

Title: Gardening for the Homebrewer
Author(s): Wendy Tweten and Debbie Teashon
ISBN: 978-0760345634
Pages: 208
Release date: September 15, 2015
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Genre: Nonfiction/How to
Format: Softcover
Source: Review copy

As I watch my attempt to grow barley wither into brown shrivels of failure, I prepare for next Spring. Winter means reading, research, and learning from my mistakes. I took a ton of notes and wrote quite a lot about my experience growing my own beer ingredients this year, but as much as I’ve learned, I’m still seeking something more comprehensive.

There’s not a lot out there for the intrepid homebrewing soilophile.

There’s a 1998 book, The Homebrewer’s Garden, by Dennis Fisher, which includes solid information, but spreads itself thin, trying to cover too many grains, herbs, and other sundry ingredients. It’s also 17 years old; a lot has changed in beer and brewing (hop and barley varieties, just as a start, never mind technology), making this guide feel a bit sepia tone when read by a member of the internet generation.

Then come the Brewing Elements series from Brewer’s Publications. These four are a must read for any brewer (home or otherwise) who has even the tiniest inkling of interest in the science behind the beverage. But for the wealth of knowledge contained therein, these books are still fundamentally informational; For the Love of Hops contains a brief section on growing your own hops, but is moreso dedicated to the history and scientific workings of the cultivar. The same goes for the other three; excellent books, but lacking practical lessons.

Anyone looking to (successfully) grow any beer ingredient at home likely has to turn to the internet (or, for you AHA members, old copies of Zymurgy Magazine). That’s not the worse thing ever, but correlating loose content from various websites can be as tedious as weeding an overgrown carrot patch.

Fellow blogger Ed from The Dogs of Beer was kind enough to CC me on an offer for a review copy of Gardening for the Homebrewer. I happily wrapped my dirty little hands around the book, hoping for a spiritual update to Fisher’s work.

Physically, the book is gorgeous: full-color macro photographs that look good enough to scratch and sniff, color-coded text boxes with faux-decoupage flair, near-perfect formatting that organizes the content brilliantly. It’s really a pleasure to read, and the visuals don’t detract from the writing itself. While written by two people, it reads in one coherent voice, offering direct explanation and guidance with little pomp or fluff.

It’s broken into distinct sections over seven chapters, starting with a basic primer on gardening that’s simple enough for a total rookie, but also contains just enough for the journeyman. Chapter 2 covers beer, but only spans 25 pages. The malting process is described across two pages, with no images or sundry information to guide the reader. If you are looking for a book on the basics of beer before it’s even near the kettle, this has some good information. If you were looking for a more comprehensive guide to barley, malting, or troubleshooting the latter, keep on searching.

More than half of the book is dedicated to “other” which in this case means grapes, berries, herbs, apples, pears, and more. Much like Fisher’s book, Gardening for the Homebrewer reads an inch deep and a mile long. Trying to cover all these plants and ingredients is an admirable goal, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and readers like me wanting more.

From their bios on the last page and a quick Google, it’s clear that both Tweten and Teashon are very accomplished gardeners. What is unclear is if they are homebrewers (or have ever homebrewed). While all of the information presented is factually correct, there’s a sort of disconnect in the exposition, as if they are more focused on the plants than their role as an ingredient in the brewing process. That could be my beerish romanticism pontificating and not an actual flaw, but it’s worth noting there’s next to no brewing-related content in this book. Suggestions for what beverage the plant might go best in, but not a lot about when or how to include it in a typical brewing/fermentation process.

Regardless of their identity as brewers, the co-authors do a fantastic job of outlining some of the most practical (and sometimes hard to find, even with a black belt in Google-fu) details of growing. Simple but integral details like appropriate USDA growing zone, spacing, and pruning are included for every plant. Most even have a picture of the mature plant, a surprisingly helpful addition for someone who starts with a handful of seeds and isn’t entire sure what elderberry is actually supposed to look like.

Despite not having what I was looking for, I enjoyed this book, and will continue to use it as a reference. The overview of growing conditions are worth the price alone (there are 52 total, ranging from mint to plums), and the rather thorough section of cider apples taught me a lot I though I already knew (but apparently didn’t).

More a book for gardeners who like brewing-related plants than brewers turned gardners, but well written, edited, and presented nonetheless.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Yeast 101

Uh oh. Your homebrewing buddy just said something about “brett” and is asking your opinion about buying a stir plate. This conversation is getting dangerously yeasty.

But that’s OK! I’m here to help put the “you” back in “Eukaryote” with a primer about yeast, and why it’s so damn important to beer.

Much like the other posts in this series, this primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a journey to the center of fermentation, check out Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’s book from Brewer’s Publications.

Yeast as a Living Thing

Yeast is literally everywhere. You breathed some in just now. You probably ate some that was resting on your lunch. The little buggers are all up in your shit (literally), and play an important bit part in maintaining your body’s homeostasis. Fret not; it’s an integral part of our immune system and you’d have to ingest a very large amount of it to experience any ill effects (see: auto-brewery syndrome).

Biologically, yeast falls under the Fungi kingdom (here’s a quick reference if you forgot your high school taxonomy). They are technically eukaryotic (meaning their cells contain a nucleus that houses genetic information), but are the only single-cell eukaryote ever described by science. Despite any deeply romantic feelings you may have developed for your favorite IPA, yeast reproduces asexually, through the very painful-looking process of mitosis.

It’s tricky to organize yeast because they don’t all fit under one taxonomic group. But generally (please don’t kill me, biologists reading this) the yeast we use to brew can be classified by species, which are often sold to brewers as strains. Homebrewers and bakers will be familiar with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is probably the mostly commonly used yeast in ale. Lagers use Saccharomyces pastorianus. Then there’s the popular Brettanomyces, which is known for its distinctive and sort of gross qualities.

But that’s just a few, easy to recognize examples. There are ~1500 described strains of yeast, many of which we don’t use in brewing. The yeast in our bodies – often responsible for a number of nasty infections – is called Candida albicans. In healthy humans, this yeast is kept in check by bacteria. Fun fact: lactobacillus, a bacteria use to make some kinds of sour beer and sourdough bread, is one of the natural counter-balances to the yeast that grows in our guts.

Somewhat amazingly, we didn’t even know that yeast was a thing until one very cool French dude named Louis Pasteur described yeast and what is does in 1857. Although a scientist named Leeuwenhoeck (yea, I have no idea how to pronounce that, either) visually saw yeast in 1680, he didn’t really know what is was. Prior to Pasteur’s badass book, “The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and the Means of Preventing Them” some people assumed fermentation was spontaneous, and as White and Zainasheff note in their book, some people even thought it was the work of god(s).

Wooden brewing paddles were passed down through generations of brewers, all of who were apparently oblivious to the fact that wood was porous, and that the yeast from previous batches of beer were hiding deep inside all of their tools, just waiting to inoculate the next batch.

Yeast as a Brewing Ingredient

There’s a classic quote beer writers should know:

“We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.” — Fritz Maytag

Yeast is going to do its thing regardless of what we do. The brewer’s job is more interior decorator than creator: she needs to turn the wort into a welcome, clean, inviting home that the yeast want to move into to start their family. But the yeast aren’t picky; they’ll move into any home that’s got plenty of sugar to eat, even one infested with other nasty tenants of less reputable backgrounds. The brewer has to do everything she can to make sure the yeast and its family are the only ones living in the house, and that they’re as healthy and comfortable as possible.

Yeast can come from third party labs as dry cells, or ready-to-use liquid. While pre-packaged yeast can be used (I’ve used it dozens of times), many brewers will create a yeast “starter.” This is basically a sugary proto-beer that kick starts the growth of the yeast. A starter ensures you’ve got plenty of healthy yeast to begin and maintain a strong primary fermentation. Some companies sell “smack packs” which are a sort of all-in-one starter (that includes an activator) where you just “smack” the bag of yeast to mix up the contents and create a mini early fermentation before pitching it into the wort.

Logistically, yeast is added after the wort has been boiled, hops have been added, and the combined concoction has been cooled. The drop in temperature in very important: yeast are living things, and adding them to hot liquid can easily injure or kill them. To properly reproduce, yeast need oxygen, so wort is aerated. This is tricky, because oxygen is a mortal enemy to fermented beer.

Oxygen before yeast? Good! Oxygen after yeast? Bad!

Yeast’s primary role is to eat the sugars extracted from the base malts during mash, and turn them into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide (C02). That’s an incredible oversimplification though; the amount, type, and length of sugars, the temperature of the fermenting beer, and the type of yeast used all dictate how the yeast will perform. Fermentation is what makes beer taste like beer; you couldn’t just add alcohol to hopped-wort and expect beer. Yeast is responsible for hundreds of other compounds that produce flavors we’re all familiar with (banana and clove and fruit esters, oh my!)

Yeast is the prime mover for the Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG) equation. By measuring the original amount of sugar in the beer, and the comparing it to the final amount when fermentation in done, a brewer can calculate how much sugar is left in the beer, how much was eaten by the yeast, and how much alcohol it created. The amount of sugar the yeast ate is also called the amount of “attenuation.”

The trick to remembering the difference between ale and lager is that they are brewed using different yeasts (see above). Ale yeast ferments “on top” of the beer, while lager yeast ferments “on the bottom.” This is not a perfect rule. Yeast generally moves through the entire body of the fermenting beer, but this describes where “most” of the fermentation activity occurs.

More important than where they ferment is how they ferment; ale yeasts prefer warmer temperatures (55-70° F), while lager yeasts prefer colder temperatures (40° F). Ale yeast would go dormant and sleepy at such cold temperatures, but certain strains of lager yeast can and will ferment at higher temperatures, resulting in estery, fruity lagers a la “Steam Beer.”

Yeast as a Word

Yeast is almost always a noun. While I’m sure some intrepid wordworker could use yeast as a verb (I may be guilty of that), “yeasted” and “yeasting” don’t exist in a traditional vocabulary.

While it can be used as an adjective (yeasty) I’d warn against using it too often, because like “malty” or “hoppy,” it’s not overly descriptive. It functions perfectly well as a general label, but different yeasts perform and taste different, so when describing it, try to pull out words that capture the essence of what the yeast has done to the beer, not just that it is in fact, in there.

Writing about yeast tends to get biological very quickly, so be sure to balance your diction appropriately. No one wants to read a text book, but no one wants juicy scientific details left out either. Above all, respect yeast’s role in making beer, and remember that even though it’s not as glamorized and talked about as hops (or even malt), it’s (arguably) the single most taste-defining ingredient in the entire brewing process.

Don’t believe me? Try drinking straight, uncarbonated wort.

TL;DR – Remember that yeast is the “living” part of beer, ales and lagers are classified as such by their yeast strains, and the scientific names are always italicized.

The Session #104 – Blog to Write

(For the 104th Session, Alan McLeod asks us to justify why we should keep writing about beer.)

I’ve missed The Session. Both figuratively and literally.

Directly after discovering Jay and Stan’s blogging braintrust, I didn’t miss a single iteration of the Session. I’d been diligent in following the topics, planning something ahead of time, and being ready for each month like an over-prepared college freshman. I even hosted once, much to the dismay of other bloggers, I’m sure. I miss writing Session entries because they’re fun and thought provoking and, well, easy, in the grand scheme of writing.

But I’ve also missed the deadline to post eight times in a row now (the last Session I did was #95). I know such a long hiatus might make it seem like I don’t have faith in the cause or support the idea, but realistically, it’s more about the timing of significant life events over the past year, and their direct overlap with the first Friday of each month. There are several never-to-be-finished drafts in this here WordPress database, half-hollow husks meant to be Session posts that have been left dangling from the dressform, a mess of patchwork fabric and loose threads.

I don’t want to see the Session die. I understand that I’m part of the problem by not actively participating, but I still think the idea to bring different perspectives together on a single topic has a lot of worth in a community that’s full of young writers still trying to find their voices. It’s also a great prompt for newer bloggers to jump in on without feeling sheepish: a place where everyone is welcome to say whatever they want about beer with (for the most part) little chance of repercussion.

That exists nowhere else that I know of. Other attempts to bring the community together like the Thursday night #beerchat on Twitter don’t really count, for me, as Twitter is too ephemeral and curt to really hash out any meaningful ideas.

I’ve written about why I blog before. That hasn’t changed. I keep writing here because it’s my space. No editors, no deadlines, no rules or stipulations. I’m a writer who writes way more than makes sense to consistently pitch to other publications, and in a style that most publications don’t want, anyway. Here, I’m free to do whatever, sculpt any sentences I can see in the formless clay, play with grammar and be obtuse, because no one is paying me, and the expectations are basically non-existent. For a prolific writer, a blog is creative freedom manifest. A linguistic jungle-gym. An all-you-can-eat buffet of syntactic gluttony.

A blog – if taken seriously and properly maintained – is an incredible catalyst to education. When I started in 2009, I knew comparatively…let’s see…nothing about beer. I thought I knew about brewing and styles and history, but as I began reading and studying more to write posts, I realized how startlingly little I knew. It’s given me an avenue to learn a tremendous amount about the ingredients, the processes, the people, the industry. You’re free to explore and research any topic you want, fumble through your own opinions about complex topics, engage in (and hopefully kick off) conversations that help us grow as drinkers, consumers, citizens, people. If your blogging means more to you than just banging out 150 word nonsense posts during lunch or reposting old articles/generic news pieces written by other people, you’re going to learn, whether you intend to or not.

That’s a good thing, and a reason to blog, if anyone ever needed one.

But outside of personal, artistic justification, niche blogs (and other writing) about niche topics remain important even if the format waffles, because they make up the voice of the consumer-side of the community. In every sub-culture some will rise to the top to speak and inform and possibly evangelize for the people within. Bloggers are those speakers. People who try to evolve into something beyond being that guy at the bar who erroneously explains the difference between ale and lager to his cavalcade of half-toasted co-workers. They take a chance to thrust a shovel below the surface only scratched by others, and put in the work to bring the fertile material below up to the surface for others to see.

That’s the goal. I think. At least. It’s not always perfect, and lots of blogs and bloggers – even those of stout convictions and pounding passions – never do manage more than rote regurgitation. It’s easy to fall into a trap of writing what is easy, repeating what you hear daily, and going with the flow so entirely that you’re lost in the current.

But hey, even the worst are trying. Attempting something bigger and with more reach than rambling to their close friends or boring strangers at parties. They’re adding to a narrative that will one day be looked back upon as historical; not perhaps world-changing historical, but certainly historical as related to the legacy of alcohol in post-industrial Homo sapein culture. And as much as you might want to scoff at the idea of “beer as a piece of history,” we’re already pulling from a mutli-millennium backlog of brewing and beer lore that was deemed important enough to be chronicled as part of human history by our ancestors. Looked at in that light, we’re just scholars recording history as it happens, using the internet as our immortal cuneiform.

And that’s just it, I think. Beer bloggers just so happen to write about beer, but it’s the actual writing that should take precedence. You can tell when a blogger isn’t really a writer, trust me on that one. Passion about a topic does not automatically equate to good or interesting writing, and readers can tell when you’re writing because you think you should not because you want to.

We run these blogs to have our voices heard, opinions aired. I’d submit that most people who write about beer (myself included) only do so because we’ve seen some fundamental truth about human nature either in the science of the kettle, or the behavior behind the bartop. I think all writers write to discover some meaning; beer bloggers (and writers) just use a medium that’s a tad more esoteric than usual.

If the current incarnation of the Session has crossed the finish line of its final marathon, that’s sort of sad, but so be it. I’d implore those who wants to write to keep writing even without  it. In addition to being the main curriculum of your own not-for-profit mini-university, writing is therapeutic and cathartic, and a hell of a better way to spend your time than many other things that pass as “entertainment” these days.

But write with responsibility. Do your best to carefully sift out the nuggets of golden narrative that come washing down the sluice, and do your best to avoid showing off the rocks you found that you think are gold. If you’re going to be a voice of your sub-culture, be a good one. Add to the narrative with humor or wit or education; don’t let misinformation, rumor-mongering, and petty drama take over. We have enough of that elsewhere in the world.

Blog to write. Write to learn. Learn to write. Write to write. About beer or otherwise.

 

State of the Blog: Fall 2015

Dearest Readers,

Denver teems. Tens of of thousands of buzzing Great American Beer Festival attendees line up to taste the beer flowing very freely through the honeycombed halls and chambers of the Colorado Convention center.

I am not one of them.

Instead I sit at my desk at home, left elbow swollen to twice its size, struggling to type a blog post with one hand. I’m recovering from my second elbow surgery of the year: the second attempt to regain the function I lost nearly five years ago. It’s been a total pain in the ass (and arm) but for someone who literally types for a living, a necessary move to ensure less pain in the future.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of the people who do get to attend GABF this year. But as fun as it would be to revel in drunken debate over who AB-InBev will sally-up to next, I find my general frothing love for beer settling a bit. My once white hot desire kill FOMO where it stood by brewery hopping and tasting voraciously has cooled into a scholarly reverence for the science, sociology, and anthropology all swirled up in the glass.

That, or the Percocet is speaking for me.

It just so happens that GABF lines up with my anniversary. 2015 marks my sixth year of running Literature and Libation. It’s been a slow one on the blog, mostly because of the two aforementioned surgeries. Physically, they took me out for weeks at a time when I lacked use of fingers, hands, elbows. Mentally, I had to deal with the brain fog and sleepiness of a nacroctic-laced world.

Excuses, I know. But a little explanation (and apology) as to why I’ve missed weeks of blogging at a time.

And by “slow” I mean slow in terms of my writing output, not for overall readership. You readers have been steady and awesome, and I thank you dearly for it. I hope you know that sometimes, when a blogger thinks all is for naught, that comment or like or slight uptick in stats is enough to remind them that someone out there is completing the circuit, turning thing written into thing read and making this whole blogging thing worthwhile.

Instead of being in Denver, seeking yet another pour of Cigar City, I’ll spend my GABF time being a little introspective, and give a little insight into what I’ve been working on, why, and where its fate stands in the grand scheme of my writing.

Writing Outside the Blog

I don’t toot my own horn too much (Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder once said, “well you might at least let us know you have a horn”), but I’m very excited to announce that I’ve been toiling, interviewing, and researching a lot behind the scenes, and have an article about the mystique and design of tap handles coming out in the latest (print!) edition of All About Beer magazine. Writing for a nationally distributed magazine has been one of my goals for a long time, and it feels especially good to see some of my writing come to life on ink and paper, rather than just a screen.

I’m working on a few other things for AAB too, but can’t really say much until ideas are in place and accepted. Either way, I’m very happy to be writing for such a well edited and well put together magazine. It’s really, as cliche as it sounds, a writerly dream come true.

December, 1919

I have posted 12 chapters (or 16,279 words) of my serialized beer novel so far, and have another ~12 chapters written (but not edited). My original goal was to write one chapter a week, but I clearly failed at that. C’est la vie. Life lesson learned: schedules aren’t my thing, and generating creativity on the fly (especially during busy work weeks) is no simple task.

I never made it too clear, but obviously I had not written the novel ahead of time, and planned to write it “live” one chapter at a time, all mistakes and plot holes (and the fun therein) included. I felt particularly Dickensian when I put the plan together. I still plan to finish this novel on the blog, but won’t be holding myself to any specific timeline. It received a pretty solid reception for being something as niche and strange as “beer fiction,” and I’ve even met a few other aspiring beer writers through it, including Leslie Patiño, who is actively writing a beer-centric novel.

I started this project because I thought there was a dearth in beer and brewing related fiction. I still think there is. I’m also working on a list of beer’s appearances in popular media, but that concept will get its own post at some point.

Homegrew

As much passion as I have for the project, I must admit: the effort of running two blogs at the same time was a bit much for me. The creation of posts, maintenance of the sites, sharing the content, all the logistical rigmarole just proved too much. It was either sacrifice the new website or my job, so sad but obvious decisions were made.

The good news is, I actually did grow hops, barley, and capture my own yeast this year. I toiled hard in that backyard dirt and have some very fascinating results, along with several hundreds of pages of notes. I have even added to the original scope substantially, covering things a brewer may want to grow besides the big four, including fruit, spices, and peppers.

I learned a hell of a lot this Spring and Summer, but didn’t have the time (or functional arms) to turn it all into formal blog posts. Now that I’ve gotten the basics under control and better understand my limitations (the wetness of Maryland makes barley here very susceptible to disease), next year I can actually provide some content that will help like minded brewer-gardeners grow all their own beer.

I should have suspected I’d need a practice year, but at least now I’ve got tons of pictures, research, and notes to work from, and can make Homegrew more of an tangible resource for other people to use in 2016.

Nom de Bier

My newest project is very exciting, and I’ve been reading a lot more than usual to prepare for it. I opened with a beer review by Shakespeare, and have two more (one by H.P. Lovecraft, one by Earnest Hemingway) coming soon. It’s going to take me some time to study the authors my readers suggested, so those posts will come after I’ve gotten my feet wet. This whole project requires a lot of extracurricular reading. Not that I’m complaining; I’ll just need to carve out some additional time to put eyes to text.

2016 and Beyond

I rarely admit this, but there were times this year, where (in pain and out of ideas) I thought maybe this blog had reached its natural lifespan, and should be put out to URL pasture. There’s a sort of natural ebb and flow to running and writing for something like this, but I didn’t want to go through too many spiritual rebirths trying to keep my own interest alive and in turn lose the entire identity of the blog.

I’m happy to say that my doomsaying was premature, and now, over the crest of the wave of my surgeries and physical rough spots, I feel a renewed energy to keep writing. I hope you’re still onboard to keep reading.

Cheers!

-Oliver

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Malt 101

Hey, I see you there, backing away from that conversation about malt because one person started talking about amylase activity in mash.

Get back in there slugger! I got you covered with this overview of what malt is, how it’s made, and why it’s important.

This primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a deep dive into delicious piles of malt, check out John Mallet’s book from Brewer’s Publications. I heard the guy who edited it is pretty cool.

Malt as a beer ingredient

While consumers may name hops as the most recognizable ingredient in beer (water is always so sadly overlooked), malt does a ton of selfless work in the brewhouse. Loose kernels of malted grain are cracked in a mill then added to the mashtun, where they steep at a specific temperature to encourage enzyme activity, ultimately creating the sweet primordial soup from which all beerish life will eventually emerge: wort.

A beer’s recipe will normally include a combination of base malts and specialty malts.

Base malts are generally pale with high diastatic power (also known as degrees Litner), meaning in layman’s terms that they have the potential to produce more sugar, more easily. They provide the food for the yeast (often called fermentables), and a beer made entirely of a single base malt would be a shade of yellow or gold with a singular complexity.

Specialty malts are added at various points during the mash (depending on the recipe), and contribute to the color, aroma, and flavor profile of the beer. Contrasting the base malts, they tend to contain very few fermentable sugars, and are used primarily for their other gustatory and olfactory qualities.

The length of the sugars extracted by the enzymes in mash dictate much of how the yeast will ferment the beer, too. It may not be as sexy as those sticky pods of lupulin, but malt is incredibly important to brewing (and enjoying) beer.

Malt as a verb

Although “malt” in the brewing industry often manifests as a noun (“what kind of malt did the brewer use in this beer?), the verb form – “to malt” – is more important to understanding the ingredient.

Cereal grains grow tall, and when they are mature, produce seeds. These seeds are like any other; out in the wild, they’d fall to the ground, get covered in dirt and moisture, and begin to grow when the next season came rolling in on Spring sun.

Simple enough.

But taken out of the natural cycle, cereal grains cannot make beer until they are malted, or more specifically, soaked, germinated, and dried. Maltsters (the people who make malt, shockingly enough) harness the seed’s biological imperative, and trick it into growing. They place the seeds into a bed of water and let them begin to grow roots and breathe. The goal is to allow the seed to change – or modify – sufficiently that it will break down its own internal sugars and release them into the hot waters of the mash to make wort.

When the seed is fully modified (or close to) they halt the growing and modification process by blowing hot air through the grain. After the tiny roots are removed (a process call deculming), the malt is kilned, both to prevent spoilage and create desired flavors through Maillard reactions. All of a beer’s color is derived from its malt; the darker the roast, the darker the beer, from the delicate daffodil of lager (pale bale malt) to the midnight dark of stout (roasted barley).

It’s imperative the grain be malted well before it reaches the brewery; without the malting process the seeds would be dry, rock hard, and lacking the necessary sugars to provide a feast for the yeast. Apparently some attempts at non-malt beer have been tried by the Japanese, but 99% of the time, when we’re talking beer as history and culture knows it, we’re talking malted grains.

Malt as a noun

“Malt” as a standalone makes for a poor noun. It’s far too abstract, as many different grains like rye, wheat, sorghum, oat, rice, and corn can be malted.

While yes, malted barley makes up the vast majority of all malt used in beer making, it’s important to quantify which type of malt you’re referring to, which is why you’ll often see references to “malt barley” in beer writing. Malted barley itself can be expanded out into a huge list of varieties and levels of roast, and many beer recipes use multiple types of malted barley to achieve certain flavors and colors (two-row, six-row, Munich, Carapils, Crystal, patent black, etc). Other beers mix types of malted grains – a rye IPA for example might use both malted barley and malted rye.

“Grain” is equally lacking as a noun. Industry jargon discusses the grain bill of a beer (or the list of malts that went into the mashtun) but the word itself refers to unmalted seeds. Grain exists in the fields; it’s an agricultural term. “Grist” – as in grist bill – reads similar; it implies ground grain (like that used to make bread flour), but makes no reference to whether or not it has been malted. Neither are fundamentally incorrect and both are used widely, but it’s always good to remember exactly what each means.

Malt as an adjective/adverb

In Chapter 2 of his book, Mallet says that he thinks Munich malt is the closet match to quintessential “malt flavor” and I tend to agree. It compares best to malt as it appears outside of beer: malted milkshakes and malted chocolate balls. But other varieties of barley malt taste very different; dark roasted specialty malts, like Special B for example, can have notes of raisins and dates, while some other pale base malts taste like Pillsbury dinner rolls or KFC biscuits. All that to say that while there is a basic malt flavor, varieties of malts can taste very, very different from each other.

“Malt” works perfectly as a traditional adjective: malted barley. Use it with impunity.

It doesn’t work at all as a blanket adverb: “malty.”

“Malty” is lazy. And boring. And uninspired.

It’s equivalent to boiling The Alchemist’s Heady Topper or Ballast Point’s Sculpin down to “hoppy.” A single adjective doesn’t do justice to the complexity and variety our tongue and noses are capable of experiencing. Saying a beer is “malty” is like saying that your steak tastes like meat or your wine tastes like grapes; of course it does, it’s quite literally made of that thing. Every single beer in the world (barring maybe that weird aforementioned Japanese stuff) will in some capacity taste malty.

Use bready or biscuity instead. Or toasted or roasted or burnt. Hundreds of other, more specific adjectives can describe what you’re tasting, so don’t  cop out and go with “malty.” Your future readers thank you.

I understand a lot of people use “malty” as a way to grade the level of noticeable malt flavor when compared to others beers and styles, but it’s still an unimaginative smear of language being used in the place of proper, descriptive prose. If something tastes more malty than something else, say exactly that, but then follow it up with concrete examples of what you’re actually tasting.

Malt is both simple and complex, both obviously present and hiding in the background. Take the time to get to know how malt works in your favorite beers, and you’ll discover a new appreciation for the naturalistic side of beer, and how amazing it is that maltsters have basically bridled and domesticated the Kreb’s cycle. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still beautiful in its own, agronomic way, and deserves to be treated with respect lest it, and your writing about it, be infested with weevils.

TL;DR – to use the term “malt” or “malted” is to imply that a grain underwent a specific process that has been used to make beer for centuries. It’s a verb first, a noun second, an adjective third, and an adverb never.

One million pounds of barley malt drying at the Budwesier malting plant in Idaho Falls, ID.

Nom de Bier – Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo by William Shakespeare

This is entry #1 in the series “Nom de Bier” – good beer reviewed by famous authors (as emulated by me). I do not claim to speak for these authors, nor am I an expert scholar in their particular style, so please feel free to correct/admonish as you see fit.

Beer Review – Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo (barrel aged)
Style: English Strong Ale
ABV: 8.0%
IBU: 30-35

By: William Shakespeare

Sonnet CLV

From bottom where Eros did spring his Sting,
Through much bubbly affair rose sweet head, O;
But focus nay on bubbles should the tale sing,
Instead in oaken planks dark fruits do grow.
A Smith named Sam, a hero born into
Malten cavalcades proceeding to tun;
Man and Nature together set to brew,
And what yeast embark may ne’er be undone.
An odd thing though this, partly tongues note sour –
By work of raisins and spry, teeming wood –
It dances reliquary, somber, dour;
As if mourning a time long passed, lost good.
A tribute, nay, an homage aged old,
Captured in glass, for you to pour, to hold.

Sonnet CLVI

That god not settled with simple ale bliss
Sought more beyond what tradition limits,
As sailors once set eyes on ambergris,
So too did Smith on the cooper’s habit.
And O! How the amber flowed from slick steel,
Down and round bent staves to beer bellies bound,
And here it stayed, a year, flavor made real:
The hold of a ship, full of beer, run ‘ground.
That year much did swirl for yeast finds sleep rare,
And what once was beer in tree’s brace did find
Notes, smells unfettered now but palate fair,
And bitter music played in time with rind.
If one sought brown or pale or stout sweet woe
For neither, nor, and none, this strong ale show.

Sonnet CLVII

Elements conjured forth through Water pure
A tincture; Fire’s bane and Earth’s lament.
On Air life gulped sweet life shy of demure,
And found in liquid our Spirit’s repent.
Ask one now, she, ‘should imbibe or abstain?’
‘All depends’ answer they, ‘what dost thou seek?’
From life from this place, melodic refrain?
Or days left unfulfilled, the same, so weak?
If the latter, fly now, Smith wants you not;
Much rather he’d have a soul gilded bold.
So into your life cast Gambler’s lot
A chance you should take, on true Yorkshire gold.
But also weigh Eros, mission love born,
And weigh too, ones headache come morrow, come morn.

Grammarian’s note: I went with sonnets over a play for brevity’s sake, and because I prefer rhymed iambic pentameter to blank verse. I started with CLV (155) as Shakespeare’s final sonnet was CLIV (154). The structure for a sonnet is 12 rhyming quatrains (ABAB CDCD EFEF) with a single rhyming (GG) couplet as the closing. For more information, check out the basics of his style: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/writingstyle.html

Nom de Bier – Beer Reviews as Told by Your Favorite Authors

One of my favorite exercises during grad school was to write essays that emulated the style of a specific author. My advisor (and all around amazing person and writer), Cathy Alter, had us read a nonfiction memoir and then, to the best of our ability, recreate that writer’s voice and style using our own words and topics.

It started off rough; trying to understand and then properly execute a writer’s style is like trying to guess the ingredients of an Iron Chef dish by only tasting a small portion during dinner. There are so many elements to work with, and a nebulous je ne sais quoi unique to each writer that makes 3D printing their prose a labor in dedicated and careful study, not just casual keyboard jockery.

But after some practice, I got better, and found that by analyzing other writers at a deep, intimate level, my own writing improved. It had the added bonus of teaching me to respect a large range of styles, and understand there is no one best way to present your story.

I’m nearly two years removed from grad school, and I miss those little exercises.

The obvious conclusion, “why not bring them back on the blog?”

Which of course lead to, “how do I emulate another writer’s style but also include beer?”

Enter: Nom de Bier – where iconic authors review beers!

Or, um, I try to recreate their styles and write a beer review in homage to said writer.

Originally, I had planned to do it on my own; randomly pick ten or so of my favorite authors and imagine how they’d review a beer. But one of the best parts about the grad school exercise was that I was forced to read new, different authors, outside of my comfort genres and usual literary wheelhouse.

So I made it social:

If you retweet this, I will, before the year is out, write a beer review in the style of your favorite author. #beer #beerwriting

— Oliver Gray (@OliverJGray) August 17, 2015

I did not expect 27 retweets. I’m fantastically excited that people seemed interested in this idea, and even more excited that I’ve now got an extensive, Twitter-friend built reading list. My Kindle is about to get abused in the best possible way.

When trying to emulate an author, there are three major aspects to capture:

1. Voice (this is the hardest part, and requires a bit of biographical research to know when and where the writer came from)
2. Syntax and sentence structure (this one feeds into voice: Hemingway, for example, penned his novels using a very specific syntactical method that many now recognize as part of his style)
3. Literary themes (easy enough to pick up on; much harder to execute)

Below is the list of requesters and their favorite authors (if I missed you, shoot me a tweet or email). Given that I have a lot of reading to do to truly understand these writers, I may do them out of order as I play catch up on some I’ve read less (or none) of. I may also warm up with some of my favorites, too, just to get into the swing of things before tackling some of the crazier ones on this list.

• Keith Mathias ‏@KWMathias – Cormac McCarthy
• Josh Christie @jchristie – Mary Roach
• Aaron O – BottleFarm ‏@theBottleFarm – Hunter S. Thompson
• Raising the Barstool ‏@RTBarstool – Sun Tzu
• Leslie Patiño ‏@lpatinoauthor – Harper Lee
• I think about beer ‏@ithinkaboutbeer – Mikhaíl Bulgakov
• Andrew ‏@DasAleHaus – R.L. Stine
• michaelstump ‏@_stump – William S. Burroughs
• The Beermonger ‏@The_Beermonger – Michael Chabon
• Tony ‏@DrinksTheThings – Arthur Conan Doyle
• Douglas Smiley ‏@BmoreBistroBeer – Douglas Adams
• Liz Murphy ‏@naptownpint – Christopher Buckley
• Jeff Pillet-Shore ‏@allagashjeff – Neil Gaiman
• Suvi Seikkula ‏@seikkulansuvi – Edgar Alan Poe
• cassie ‏@lastxfantasy – Johnathan L. Howard
• Xtian Paula ‏@drowningn00b – Haruki Murakami
• ‘rissa ‏@ScoginsBitch – Irvine Welsh
• Fayettebrew ‏@fayettebrew – Chuck Palahniuk
• J. R. Shirt ‏@Beeronmyshirt – John Steinbeck
• Sara ‏@DoWhat_YOU_Like – Robert Heinlein
• Nicola Chamberlain ‏@nchamberlain – Kurt Vonnegut
• Michael P. Williams ‏@theunfakempw – Lewis Carroll
• Heather Hedy F ‏@Hedytf – Stephen King
• Robert record ‏@Reach4therail – Richard Wright
• Melba ‏@melba_dnu – Harlequin Romance Style

I’m not going to hold myself to any particular schedule, as I’ve found out that doesn’t work well for me. Or my job. Or my social life. Or my brewing plans.

If you missed the original tweet and want to add your favorite author to the list, shoot me an email at literatureandlibation@gmail.com, or tweet me at @OliverJGray. Assuming I don’t spontaneously combust, or you don’t offer some very obscure, highly niche writer, I’ll get to your request eventually!

(And yes, I am still writing “December, 1919,” and working actively on Homegrew. Posts regarding both coming soon)

Dunbar’s Brewery – How Many Beers Can You Fit Into Your Brain?

Quick: do you know the full name of the person who delivers your mail? How about that dude at Dunkin Donuts who makes your greasy sausage and croissant heart-stoppers? What about your neighbor, four houses down?

No? Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault.

As postulated by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, our brains literally cannot hold onto so many relationships at once. Turns out we’re socially crippled by anatomy. After much research on primates, primitive social groups, and modern culture, Dunbar came to the conclusion that the size of our neocortex limits how many concurrent relationships we can maintain.

The maximum number of relationships is called “Dunbar’s Number,” and the average clocks in right around 150.

That’s right, even with 1000 Facebook friends and 2000 Twitter followers, you really only have about 150 meaningful, reciprocating relationships in your entire life. The Dunbar Number quantifies your varying levels of caring, and explains why we think more of our mother than some other random woman, even if they’re both good human beings.

David Wong (of Cracked.com fame) dug deeper, dubbing your ~150 relationships your “monkeysphere;” an invisible domain of other monkey-brains you keep close, who mean more to you, who you interact and associate with regularly. The inner most sphere is made up of your direct family, the next layer your close friends, the next your coworkers and neighbors, etc. As you move towards the edge of the sphere, the less you know about the people, and the weaker the relationships become.

Outside the sphere reside those we cognitively acknowledge are living on our planet, but can’t, because of sheer number, take the time to get to know. Of course we know these people exist, but they’re on the periphery of reality for us, in that shadowy realm of “people” made up of passersby and citizens of far off countries that, given their proximity to our daily lives, might as well be other planets.

Some extraordinary folk might be able to stretch how many people they can know, but generally, we’re doomed to a finite, insular core of relationships due to our basic biology.

“What the hell does this have to do with beer?” You might ask.

“Everything.” I might answer

The popular conversation surrounding the growth of craft beer (we were at 3418 breweries in the US in 2014 in case you hadn’t heard that stat in the past 10 minutes) focuses on economics and sustainability, questioning bubbles and boundaries, examining whether demand will continue to stay ahead of supply, and if so, for how long.

This is a great conversation, and it should be had long into the night over many pints. But I worry that it won’t matter if the average consumer cannot hold the concept of so many breweries (and beers) in her head in any meaningful way.

Thus the truth revealed by applying Dunbar’s Number to contemporary beer: the rampant growth of the brewing industry is outpacing our brain’s ability to create relationships with beer.

Even as a beer nerd, I’ve reached the point where I skim over the announcement of a new brewery, not because I’m inherently jaded, but because I’ve reached near-critical mass for how many breweries I can care about. I want to love the next new startup, but at some point, my connection to and understanding of said brewery is going to be cursory, if even that, unless I sacrifice some other relationship to build a new one.

For example: In my area, a decent, but hardly ridiculous beer scene (I’m looking at you, both Portlands), I have Heavy Seas, Evolution, Oliver Ales, Jailbreak, DuClaw, Union Brewing, Brewer’s Art, Flying Dog, Port City, Full Tilt, Ellicott City Brewing, DC Brau, BlueJacket, and several more. If we’re being conservative and saying each of these breweries has 5 flagship beers and 5 more seasonal/limited releases, that’s thirteen breweries and one hundred and thirty beers (130!) at my libatious disposal just within the confines of my own geographic comfort zone.

That’s not including nationally distributed brands like Lagunitas, Stone, Anchor, Sierra Nevada, and Sam Adams, and doesn’t even mention the suffocating ubiquity of macro beers or a growing selection of imports. If you add those in, and drop them all in a store with enough room to flaunt them (hello, Total Wine) you’re looking at three hundred plus beers available to me at any give time.

Because of their overwhelming numbers, most beers are relegated to an area outside of the sphere where we can form relationships; bottle shops promote craft promiscuity, encouraging drinkers to have one-night stands with single, sexy bottles. Our brains can recall about ~1500 human faces (and probably a similar amount of beer labels), but recall doesn’t involve anything beyond a simple connection to a tiny fragment of longterm memory. We’re tasting like ships passing in the night, twelve ounces slipping by lips without sign or context, isolated, clinical experiences measured in acronyms and percentages.

Modern drinkers often aren’t taking the time to get to know the beer, to court the beer, to woo the beer.

And can we blame them?

If I took the time to experience every beer in my area, I’d be (using averages) plus 19,500 calories and minus $258.70.

Every beer in the country? I’d be dangerously diabetic and in student-loan levels of debt.

We’ve developed tools to help us track the sprawl, databases to bring order to the chaos, let us think we have control over what my basic math says are ~35,000 beers being actively* brewed across the US. But tools only help catalog data for dissection, doing next to nothing to help us establish and maintain relationships with breweries. A goal, I’d surmise, nearly every member of the Brewers Association holds dear.

Drink local because your brain says you have to

Enter the concept of the beer monkeysphere, or the “beerosphere,” if you will: a geographic and sociologic area that you associate with “your” beer either by physical location in relation to your home or some kind of shared history.

Much argument about the “local” aspect of craft beer grows from hipster roots; feel good warm and fuzzies about supporting local economies and being a good member of the community. It has some merit, but I argue it’s much less deliberate, much more primal.

We associate with local breweries because they are the nearest and most comfortable; the inner circle of family in our inebriated appropriation of Dunbar’s Number. It makes sense that we can more easily form relationships with the breweries and brewers we can actually visit, making “drink local” a function of cognitive effluence more than an active sociological trend.

We drink local because distant breweries, even the great ones, exist outside of our beerosphere. We cannot care about all the breweries at once, so we default to those we’re proximate to, those with who we can tangibly interact, and most importantly, form a real, significant relationship with. A distant brewery is like the garbage man; we know he’s there and does an important thing, but we just can’t find the room to care about him personally.

It may seem extreme to think of consumers creating social (or even romantic) relationships with breweries or beers, but it’s the crux of all marketing and dollar decision making. There’s a reason you buy Cinnamon Toast Crunch over the store brand or another cereal entirely, and it has very little to do with quality. At some point you developed a connection with the “taste that you can see,” and now you’re partial because fundamentally you care about the cereal.

The same goes for beer. You’re being guided by your brain to find meaning in all of your choices, which means piling layers of experiences together to make a delicious relational sandwich. We won’t be psychologically satisfied with anything less.

Continued growth means geographically distant breweries have to find a way to become and remain relevant in a remote beer drinker’s life. For a while, the quality and execution of the beer was enough, but now, with your hometown brewery offering both good beer and good psychological validation, their job is much harder.

Some breweries, like Oskar Blues, New Belgium, and Sierra Nevada are opening secondary facilities. This is obviously a smart logistics move, but also a powerful marketing gambit, too; when the brewery is actually closer, drinkers can more easily lump it into their personal beerosphere, and start to consider it within their select, familial circle.

Ultimately, once quality and consistency become status quo, the war for consumer dollar might be fought over who can develop the best and longest lasting relationship with its drinkers. The onus could shift from brewing to storytelling, from quality assurance to marketing messaging, as breweries fight as hard for brain space as they do for shelf space.

*I say actively, because I know there are thousands upon thousands of legacy beers. A note from Greg Avola on the Untappd message boards in 2012 said that they have 175,000 beers in the database, a number that has surely grown since (but does include one-offs and homebrews, too).

Additional reading that also act as crude citations:

• Humans use Compression Heuristics to Improve the Recall of Social Networks – Matthew E. Brashears: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3604710/
• What is the Monkeysphere – David Wong: http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p1.html
• Don’t Believe Facebook; You Only Have 150 Friends – NPR Staff: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends
• The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks – Drake Bennet :http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks

Full Disclosure, False Dichotomy

Full Disclosure: Anheuser-Busch paid to fly me out to Wyoming and Idaho to view some of their barley farms and a malt processing facility. They covered my travel, lodging, food, drink, and other costs.

Additional, personal disclosure: At the risk of alienating a subsection of readers, I fully admit: it was awesome. I drank some pilot beer that will never see market, met some wonderful folks, and put more knowledge about agrarian logistics into my brain than I had previously planned to this summer. That said, I’m still the same Oliver now that I was when I got on a plane on Sunday.

But realistically, the conversation about disclosure is fruitless.

If someone pays for your trip, you disclose. There are forms. You sign them. Game over. A winner is you.

I’m much more concerned with the handling of disclosure. Without rehashing too much of what Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting said about his Twitter interactions with Andy Crouch on Monday, I want to note that it’s really easy to sit on the sidelines and complain about objectivity when you’re not actively in the middle of a junket, doing your best to, you know, actually be objective.

For those reading this who weren’t privy to what went down, here’s the TL;DR – A bunch of media folks were invited on a raw-materials trip, sponsored by Budweiser. When we started posting on social media, several people made baseless comments about not disclosing the nature of our trip.

It all kind of went pear-shaped from there.

I never even got a chance to disclose because within seconds of mentioning I was dangerously near the jaws of AB, people made some gross assumptions.

Two of Kiser’s points sang perfect harmony to what I felt, too:

1. Assumption attacks a person’s creative and ethical integrity
2. Fueling the AB hate creates a false dichotomy of dialogue with clear-cut goods and bads

The first stings. I’ve spent the past six years spending money I earn from another job to write about beer. I’ve never had advertising nor merchandised anything. I’m clearly not in this for the money or free stuff. I care about beer and brewing, from raw ingredients to pint glass. I’ve written negative and positive essays about all the players, big and small, corporate and independent, so to even insinuate that I’m somehow now ethically compromised based on one 2 day trip is particularly insulting.

Ignoring the fact that a lot of personal attacks are echoes of psychological projection, when you attack someone’s integrity, you’re attacking their baser identity. You’re saying you can’t or don’t trust them. It’s a cruel jab at writers, especially those who’ve worked very hard to to create at their best level of fair.

But here’s the real grind of my grist: I shouldn’t have to defend myself. I shouldn’t have to justify going to a place to see and learn things I would never normally have the chance to see and learn.

I didn’t join in the Twitter conversations (for the most part), because I did not want to feed the false dichotomy that has taken over all macro vs. craft debate like a malignant cancer. I didn’t feel the need (or desire) to explain my actions when my entire ethical pedigree points pretty damn clearly to “skeptical of everything.”

People on both sides have transcended the “us vs. them” argument, dug in deep, transformed beer from a beverage with deep ties to culture, economy, and biology, into some kind of political maelstrom where craft might as well be a blue C and macro might as well be a red M.

It sucks, and we lose so many potential stories to the hellish pit of needing to be correct.

I understand we’re wired to take sides, and in turn, assume our side is right. But a two-path dialogue misses all the nuance, scrutinizes the bad of one side while glossing it over on the other, and most definitely vice versa.

I know people want AB to be this sinister, root evil who are in cahoots with the Illuminati and lizard people that want to take over the planet and grow humans as meat, but it’s just not true. Has ABInBev done some brutal, less-than-desirable, rampantly capitalistic shit? You betcha (check out this piece from Christopher Barnes). Have they also done other, more altruistic things, like not patenting or trademarking barley varieties and sharing their agronomic research to the benefit of the entire global malting community? Yes.

Check your prejudice. If your immediate reaction is to decide you are right, you are probably not. What’s right and what’s wrong is a sliding scale, unique to each human and her specific experience. We need to stop with this binary either/or rhetoric. Modern beer culture could stand for a bit of intellectual humility, critical thinking, and amiable neutrality.

We’re all right. We’re all wrong. That’s the beauty of this crazy life. Try not to force your presuppositions onto others who are trying to look a little past the horizon of current party lines, but if you absolutely have to, be kind about it.